NYC
The NYC map is based on New York City's five boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx) and its world-famous metro. It is a large map containing 80 regions - 65 of them are land regions, 15 are subway stations. There are 14 bonus zones in the city. 9 of the borough bonus zones can be combined into larger bonuses that give you a few more reinforcement troops than the sum of the smaller bonus zones. The 3 subways that run across the city are bonus zones in their own right and provide extra assault routes, providing connections between distant parts of the map. The final bonus zone is a collection of 4 small islands. You need to hold 3 or 4 of the islands to receive one of two possible bonuses. This is a versatile map, good for any settings, but for the most even and balanced gameplay I'd recommend team games of quadruples or triples with no spoils and chained reinforcements. Features Collections - Unlike bonus zones these only require a specific amount of the designated regions to gain a bonus. Double Dipping - Regions show up in multiple bonus zones. Naming Challenges - The region names are written in a complex way occasionally causing deployment mistakes. Settings Manual deployment Manual is very interesting to play on this map as there are numerous locations which are good to begin on. I prefer not to start from the bottom left corner around Staten Island - many people do and assaulting large troop stacks benefits the player who takes the first turn. It is better to start with a less popular bonus like The Bronx or Inner Queens. If it is a fog of war game - best bet would be a train station. It will be very hard for opponents to spot that you have conquered a train line, but +7 bonus will pay you back in 1-2 rounds. Flat rate and no spoils For flat rate and no spoils games it is best to hold regions with fewer borders but higher zone bonuses. Inner Queens, Outer Queens, Staten Island, Small islands and Uptown Manhattan are the best to try to hold. Do not forget that subway stations give direct access to the middle of the bonus zone and you need to put a defensive troop stack there as well. Looking at different bonus zones in turn - East Brooklyn might seem easy to conquer and hold, but it has multiple disadvantages. If most players are targeting it, it is hard to protect and hard to expand from later. Its bonus is worth only +3 additional troops and it has 3 borders to defend – these borders may be assaulted from 8 different regions. Do not try for huge bonuses (such as Outer Queens) from the start. Staten Island is the best area to start from because with the addition of 3 Small Islands you can hold 2 bonuses with 2 borders for +3 bonus. The Bronx is a good place to expand if you initially dropped a lot of regions there, as it is the easiest zone with 2 bonuses - West Bronx and East Bronx. This combination has only 4 borders and will award you with 10 troops per turn! Later you can grab the 6 Train bonus zone with 5 border regions and it will give you 14 additional troops per turn. But it takes time and a good initial troop drop to conquer these Bronx bonus zones so do not try to take them if you see that it will be impossible to hold them - better to clear the surrounding area and then try to acquire the bonus itself. Escalating Since NYC is a big map, it will be hard to run the map with a medium spoils cash (10-15 troops) and you will need to wait till 30-40 troop cashes or even higher to access all your target's regions. This is the reason why this map often ends in stalemate for escalating singles games. There are few genuine bottlenecks on the map - most of them are in Staten Island and around The Village area. It is advised to hold regions with a lot of borders across the map because they give you additional attack routes and increase your mobility. Try to get Jamaica, The Village, East Flatbush and Claremont Village as they have the most borders and therefore are key regions on the map. Almost every region on this map has more than three borders so you don't need to worry about being locked out from the main action. The only bottleneck regions on the map are the 3 Small Islands which can be blocked by Financial District. 8-player escalating fog of war is an interesting setting for this map. The game becomes one of hide’n’seek and is much more fun to play. But you need to be careful not to reduce an opponent to a single region which may be eliminated by another player. Assault (using a spoils cash) only when you are sure that you know all your target's regions. Nuclear Nuclear works well on this map because the right spoil can break a huge bonus zone. But because there are 80 regions on the map you have to be lucky to pick the right spoil from the deck. Assassin It is hard to play assassin on this map but you might find it very interesting. People usually don't pay attention to players who are not their target so you might sneak an additional 2-3 troops by taking a bonus zone. But to do your elimination you will need a high value set in escalating spoils (see Escalating section of the guide). Fog Fog of war will complicate the game and make it harder to find your target, but I don't consider it a downside as it just shifts the gameplay to a more strategic one where you have to plan your actions in advance and be extra-careful about assaulting other players' regions. 1v1 Each player starts with 26 regions and it is easy to drop a whole bonus zone on your 1st turn. The first player has an opportunity to lower his opponent's region count during initial turns thus making him deploy fewer troops on his next turn. You need to capture at least 3 regions to lower your opponent's deployment by 1, which is quite possible as you will have 8 troops to deploy. There are no easy bonus zones to hold in such a set up because having a +7 or +6 deploy allows your opponent to break one of your borders. Of course, the Small Islands bonus seems to be a good place to advance from because it has only 1 border, but often one of the islands starts as a neutral region. So your goal should be to push away your opponent from your undefended territories and lower your opponent's region count so they receive a smaller region accumulation bonus. Try to use neutral regions to protect your regions that have only 1 troop on them. Plan your assaults so that your regions are surrounded mostly be neutrals - that will save you some troops on your borders and will let you use those troops for assaulting instead of defending. The two player game is luck dependent and only spoils can alter this. Flat rate or escalating are well balanced for 1v1, Nuclear doesn't bring much spice - as there are so many regions on the map it will be hard to nuke the most beneficial region of your opponent. Fog of war can aid your defense and may let you conceal the fact that you hold an entire bonus zone. Team games The most common bonus will be Staten Island and 3 Small Islands. You can protect them from outside the zone borders but it is better not to because they can be assaulted from other regions. Your opponent will attempt to trim your defense again and reinforce again, and so on until the last player will break you. So sometimes it is better to put a defense on 2 adjacent regions or block from the inner side of the bonus zone so that your opponents will have only one chance to break you (and will block other teammates to continue the break if they have failed). In team games it is important to develop one area and advance from there rather than having multiple spread-out strongholds across the map. Much of the fighting in no spoils team games revolves around the Small Islands or Staten Island bonus zones. But do not panic if your opponent has put a solid defense on the Small Islands - the bonus is worth +1 troop only (we do not count the full bonus as it is much harder to hold) so maybe it will be easier for you to even the position in terms of troop income by taking 3 regions from your opponent. Always evaluate if it is better to break the bonus or take some other regions with opponent 1's across the map. It would be good to trap a player within the bonus he holds. This way he will not be able to use his big troop bonus right away and will be forced to deploy on teammates. So you will have one more turn to counter that deployment or land a finishing blow.